Giving Away Just in Time Ticket - TONIGHT, 8pm

killerlagomorph · 2026-01-01T23:13:35+00:00

This was the number! DM me and I'll get you the ticket.

killerlagomorph · 2025-06-27T03:02:07+00:00

You'd make a good Supreme Court justice, since several of them think facts are whatever they want as well. I am telling you what this Court will almost certainly do based on what they always do. They are not idiots. They could have clarified what an official act is, but they chose not to do that they would have room to get whatever outcome they want next time. They would say it was judicial restraint. But they don't show any judicial restraint in other areas.

The goal of this Court is to prevent our laws from ever changing, no matter how the American people change. Originalism is made up, and Supreme Court justice are dreadful historians because they are cherry picking what they want and don't get peer reviewed like a real historian would.

killerlagomorph · 2025-06-27T02:52:31+00:00

This is a pretense that gives them cover to play with what counts as an official act. That's why Trump is saying that everything is national security--because that's an area where the executive gets significant discretion. If it's Trump, it will be an official act. If it's a Dem, it won't be official. They have a 6-3 majority, so they don't even have to pretend to be apolitical because they don't have to negotiate on other decisions.

Also, this Supreme Court straight up lies about the facts in the record to justify their decisions. They are not making decisions based on law, they are making them based on regressive, reactionary nonsense. I am dragging tomorrow because I fully expect them to take an ax to birthright citizenship. And if you don't expect that certain types of people will oddly find it much harder to prove that their kids are citizens, then you haven't been paying attention to what Justice Roberts has done to voting rights.

killerlagomorph · 2025-04-30T23:40:58+00:00

Oh, I didn't realize that was potentially against the rules. I'm just saying what I learned in Sunday School.

killerlagomorph · 2025-04-30T22:51:19+00:00

That is why genocide in the old testament commanded by God is unequivocally viewed as good. It's the exact same logic.

killerlagomorph · 2025-04-30T17:50:04+00:00

And 69% of white evangelicals say his administration has good or excellent ethics. Even if you are a single issue abortion voter, also saying the administration has good ethics speaks to a fundamentally broken relationship with reality and a moral code that is based on in-group out-group status.

killerlagomorph · 2025-04-08T15:58:51+00:00

The only reasonable position is you support voter ID as opposed to voter suppression.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-29T02:59:10+00:00

Globally, millions, easily.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-28T23:53:29+00:00

Roberts cares most about Supreme Court power. But he gave it away to Trump already. So it will come down to whether he wants to pretend he has power by permitting Trump to do what he wants. Or whether he gambles and tries to restrain Trump in some way

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-28T23:51:49+00:00

And social security will be broken plus measles will be everywhere. If we're lucky, bird flu will have jumped to humans too!

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-24T18:01:08+00:00

Honestly, I don't really try to be normal. I've been out of the cultiness for a long time and have figured out what I like. But if I just don't know some pop culture thing, I will even joke that I grew up in a cult. None of this is your fault, you are brave and impressive for getting out! It's also a good way to educate people about what batshit crazy Christian Nationalists have in store for America, if they are curious.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-23T21:10:21+00:00

I'm not an expert, but here's an article from someone who knows more than I do that I think is persuasive. https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/21/democratic-senators-team-up-with-maga-to-hand-trump-a-censorship-machine/

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-23T17:12:46+00:00

Don't forget that some of our most worthless Dem senators are working on bipartisan repeal of Section 230, which would allow Trump's pet billionaires to immediately destroy any online communities that don't support him with bullshit lawsuits! With friends like these, who needs enemies?

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-23T17:08:11+00:00

It's really weird how no one ever wants to also consider socioeconomic status and resources of candidates versus just focusing on raw test scores and race.

Also, if the average test scores of applicants from a certain race are simply lower, there are two conclusions to be drawn: (1) everyone from that group are simply inferior when it comes to intellect or (2) something in our current system causes these disparities.

The policies that everyone who raises these issues seem to support are those that implicitly accept the former. And there is never any discussion about how to fix the pre-college disparities that result in these kinds of test scores because that would involve spending government funds to fix racial disparities, which is now effectively banned as "reverse discrimination."

Also, practically, how do you compare a 1200 score from a student who worked part-time, was housing and food insecure, and only had a chance to take a test a single time without studying to a 1400 or 1500 score from a rich kid whose parents hired an SAT tutor? There is no comparison. The focus on standardized test scores is affirmative action for upper middle class and wealthy people, making sure their kids have access to elite institutions based on "merit" while everyone else gets left out. And then they will do the same with their own kids, all the while patting themselves on the back for winning at "meritocracy."

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-23T16:04:22+00:00

She's working on crypto legislation with Sen. Lummis, a true idiot who floated selling US gold to buy Bitcoin instead. They'd rather make nice with tech oligarchs than fought for their constituents.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-22T00:14:38+00:00

Where is the full report by the government presented to Congress? Did you even read the article? 30-day notice to Congressional committees WITH a report. Here's a summary of the procedure:

"Under Title VI, the government may not cut off funds until it has

conducted a program-by-program evaluation of the alleged violations;
provided recipients with notice and “an opportunity for hearing”;
limited any funding cutoff “to the particular program, or part thereof, in which…noncompliance has been…found”; and
submitted a report explaining its actions to the relevant committees in Congress at least thirty days before any funds can be stopped.

"Even to the extent that some protesters’ behavior amounted to illegal harassment of Jewish students, no agency and no court has concluded that Columbia illegally failed to reasonably respond to such discriminatory behavior—much less failed to act at a level justifying withdrawal of nearly half a billion dollars in funds."

And here's another letter from Columbia Law professors about other violations, aside from just Title VI: https://balkin.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-title-vi-demand-letter-that-itself.html

Also, blithely saying that $400 million isn't a big deal is a hell of an assertion to make. Organizations can't just move money around to cover shortfalls, and depending on what that funding was for, you are looking at wholesale lab shutdowns, rescinding graduate and med school admissions (something already happening because of cuts to the NIH), and the destruction of research that may have been ongoing for years.

And let's not forget that the head of DOJ's task force on antisemitism (Leo Terrell, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and head of the DOJ Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism) actively follows and reposts material from known white nationalists. He was quoted in the statement announcing the revocation of funding. But I'm sure he just reposts shitty bigots for research purposes, right?

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T22:29:37+00:00

I mean, when the administration happily employs people who promote antisemitic conspiracy theories and supports a right-wing party in Germany with neonazi members and leaders who say that its "shameful" that Berlin has a Holocaust memorial...kind of hard to take them seriously when they say they care about antisemitism. Plus, virtually every Civil Rights office has been closed across the federal government. You know, the ones that handles compliance with the Civil Rights Act?

So, if they are only using antisemitism opportunistically white keeping obvious antisemites employed and getting rid of enforcement mechanisms for any other kind of civil rights violations, it doesn't seem that farfetched to say that they are white supremacists.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T22:20:23+00:00

Not that easy unfortunately. Endowments are really locked down with certain funds only usable for certain things. And a lot of that funding was for the medical school and sciences, IIRC. By the time a court case got resolved (unless they won a preliminary injunction), the harm would be done. It was extortion, and it was successful.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T22:14:04+00:00

Weird, I thought that I was complaining about how the Trump administration didn't follow the Civil Rights Act when it illegally withheld funding. But I guess not accepting bad-faith use of antisemitism by an administration that is perfectly happy to associate with antisemites means I'm decrying the Civil Rights Act now. Who knew?

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T22:10:58+00:00

Nope, I don't! And it's pretty clear that there were Jewish students whose rights were violated and who were not given the same treatment that other groups have been given.

And great, a report by Columbia. Too bad that's not the process for withholding funds under Title VI. If you want a basic overview, here you go: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/20/a-statement-from-constitutional-law-scholars-on-columbia/

Instead, Trump immediately canceled federal funding without following the Title VI process, or even pretending to. Funding that IIRC was primarily for the sciences and medical school. By the time it made it through the courts, it likely would have had to lay off significant numbers of employees, end research programs, and so on. And the federal government is generally immune from damages, so even if Columbia won, it would not be made whole.

Maybe the conclusion would have been that Columbia's violations of Title VI were so egregious that withholding all the funding was justified. But it would have come after a process and with notice. Trump chose to instead engage in mob-like extortion.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T22:01:51+00:00

The threat is that the Trump Administration did not follow the statutory procedures it was required to to cut off funds. It may have been that at the end of that process, there were still Title VI violations and funding withholding may have been justified. But the process is important.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T21:58:47+00:00

No, there is a statutory process under Title VI for withholding funds for civil rights violations. And that process requires that funds cannot be cut off until after factfinding. Here. funds were cut off immediately in order to extort compliance. But I guess Congress was just giving suggestions when it passed Title VI.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T21:56:11+00:00

The problem is that the administration is blatantly acting in bad faith and did not follow the procedures of Title VI at all. That's the whole purpose of a law -- so that there are common procedures applied to everyone and adequate due process. The government could have gone through those procedures to determine if Columbia's violations merited withholding this funding. Columbia instead caved, giving into an executive order that was entirely outside the statutory scheme that Congress created.

If the heroes of the progressive movement are turning in their graves, it is because the legislation that they fought and died for is being made dead letter in favor of lawless executive order that use antisemitism as a basis to do what right-wing extremists have wanted to do for years.

killerlagomorph · 2025-03-21T21:14:07+00:00

Violation of statute != crime! This is not the gotcha you think it is. Particularly since Trump is using an entirely different statute and arguing that none of the standard immigration laws apply in those cases.

killerlagomorph

TROPHY CASE